Prominent Scholar to Deliver Annual Delasanta Lecture at Providence College

Providence, R.I. — Dr. John O’Callaghan of the University of Notre Dame will present the Liberal Arts Honors Program’s annual Rodney Delasanta Lecture at Providence College at 4:30 p.m. on Thursday, March 29, in Aquinas Hall Lounge.

The lecture, titled “Human Dignity, Excellence, and the Embryo,” is sponsored by the Honors Program and is named in honor of the late Dr. Rodney K. Delasanta ’53, professor of English and director of the program from 1987 to 2004.

O’Callaghan, an associate professor of philosophy and director of the Jacques Maritain Center at the University of Notre Dame, will focus on a philosophical and cultural discussion of the use of human embryos for experimentation, particularly experimentation that leads to their destruction. O’Callaghan will identify the problem with the reasoning about embryonic experimentation by looking more closely at the moral character of medical practice in treating illness and disability within the human community.

O’Callaghan, who earned a master’s degree in mathematics at Notre Dame, worked as an engineer in Boston for two years before returning to the university for a doctoral degree in philosophy in 1996. Before joining the faculty there, O’Callaghan taught philosophy at Creighton University and the University of Portland.

He was appointed a permanent member of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas in 2010.

The event is free and open to the public. For more information, call the Liberal Arts Honors Program at (401) 865-1814.